This performance is proudly presented by Mr. Derrick Young.
"I chose to survive," Melissa Etheridge declares on "Being Alive," the jubilant opening track of her 17th studio album, Rise, and the sentiment carries the weight of everything that followed her last record of new material, 2019's The Medicine Show.
The years in between were anything but quiet. Unable to tour during the pandemic, Etheridge launched more than 200 episodes of Etheridge TV, wrote her memoir Talking to My Angels, and triumphed on Broadway with her one-woman show Melissa Etheridge: My Window. She also founded the Etheridge Foundation, focused on plant-based approaches to illness and addiction, and starred in the 2024 Paramount+ docuseries I'm Not Broken. Through it all, she carried profound personal grief — most devastatingly the 2021 opioid death of her son, Beckett.
Rise is where she processes it all.
